Film / V/H/S: Viral

V/H/S/ Viral is a 2014 Found Footage anthology film featuring segments directed by Marcel Sarmiento, Gregg Bishop, Nacho Vigolando, Justin Benson, and Aaron Moorhead. It follows 2012's V/H/S and 2013's V/H/S/2. It continues the series' theme of videos of violent supernatural events that subsequently have bizarre effects on those who view them, except now the films are being taken to a broader audience.

Amateur videographer Kevin finds an escape from the problems he has with his abusive grandmother by filming his beautiful girlfriend Iris. When the high-speed police chase of an ice-cream van enters his neighborhood, he seizes the opportunity to create the ultimate viral video. But his quest for viral fame quickly becomes a frantic rescue mission when Iris is hypnotized and seemingly abducted by the runaway van.

• Vicious Circles - The wraparound story. Violence, injury, and insanity slowly begin to overcome the citizens of Los Angeles as they film the the chase, and Kevin is reduced to following a strange signal on his phone to find the van and rescue Iris before it's too late.
• Dante the Great - In a segment partially framed as an investigative documentary, John McMullen, an amateur magician living in a trailer park, discovers a cloak that was once owned by Harry Houdini. John discovers that the cloak allows him to perform real magic when he wears it, and he goes on to perform in front of huge audiences, becoming the immensely famous "Dante the Great" (Justin Welborn). John soon discovers, however, that the cloak's powers come at a bloody cost... which he'll do anything to pay.
• Parallel Monsters - In Spain, an inventor named Alfonso records himself putting the finishing touches on a prototype interdimensional portal. Activating the device, he meets a version of himself from a parallel universe. The two versions of Alfonso agree to swap places and briefly document each other's worlds, but Alfonso slowly discovers that the newly-discovered world has developed along a frighteningly different path than his own.
• Bonestorm - Jason and Danny are a pair of LA skateboarders who are attempting to film the ultimate skate video. They decide to take a break from filming their dangerous stunts and decide to rope in their friend Shaun and their cameraman Taylor for a day trip to Tijuana, hoping to seek out a prime location to finish their video. The skateboarders eventually find an old flood channel full of strange symbols, and then proceed to run afoul of a mysterious cult.

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This movie provides examples of the following

General

• Call-Back: The wraparound is littered with Freeze Frame Bonuses of characters from the franchises' previous installments, such as Lily from the first film and Father and Lena from the second.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Only hinted at in the wraparound segments of the previous films, it is seemingly confirmed by the end of this one. Each of the other segments fits this trope as well.
• Crapsack World: Adding to the tally of the previous installments, we now have an Eldritch Abomination disguised as an article of clothing, a zombie cult and the maneating demon who leads them, and the videos of all these things might just have finally succeeded in bringing about The End of the World as We Know It. Yet somehow there still manages to be a parallel world that's even more of a crapsack than this one.
• Developing Doomed Characters: A mainstay trait of the series that continues here, uninterrupted.
• Non-Indicative Name: Unlike the prior films in this series, the film medium is only logically part of Parallel Monsters — Dante the Great has VHS tapes referenced, but not exclusively, and Bonestorm and Vicious Circles both expressly do not use VHS at all.
• Nothing Is Scarier: An arm here and a leg there are all that is ever seen of the Big Bads of Dante The Great and Bonestorm. The driver of the ice cream van is never seen at all.
• Oddball in the Series: VHS and V/H/S/2 varied up their entries' sub-genres. Viral instead has three demonic/satanic-themed entries, and two of them being almost primarily action films. See also Reimagining the Artifact below.
• Reimagining the Artifact: Viral no longer involves someone actively watching the vignettes shown, and indeed has distanced itself from the VHS medium of the prior movies. Instead, the stories are something bystanders are watching during the wraparound segment (but which the protagonist is oblivious to except for noticing the bleeding eyes), and most of the camera work is clearly using digital cameras or phone cameras.

Vicious Circles

• Abusive Grandparent: Kevin lives with his grandmother, with whom he is constantly quarreling. She even bloodies his nose offscreen during a particularly vicious argument.
• An Arm and a Leg: At one point, a bicyclist is dragged down the street by the van until his feet tear off.
• Arc Words: "Haven't you ever wanted to be a part of something bigger than you?"
  • "Do you want to go viral?"
• Asshole Victim: The porn director and his taxi driver accomplice.
• Big Red Button: Conveniently labeled "UPLOAD."
• Call-Back: The girl who pulls the gun on the porno director is hinted to be the girl from the first two movies. Her boyfriend in the first film, one of the thugs from Tape 56, was mentioned to have sold the sex tape he was filming to a reality porn site. She confirms that this was actually true, and she's gone after the porno director first because he bought the footage for his blog, the exposure apparently having had a massive negative impact on the girl's life.
• Damsel in Distress: Iris disappears at the beginning of the film, and her frantic, screaming image on Kevin's phone is the only thing giving him hope that she's still alive.
• The Dog Bites Back: A woman being filmed by a man for an amateur porn site turns out to already be on it, due to him having bought some old footage from her ex. She draws a gun and forces him to strip, threatening to shoot him in the groin and implying via her dialogue that the exposure had a massive negative impact on her life.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The fight between the porn director and the model is ended by a police car flipping through the air and landing on their taxi, killing all three people inside.
• Eye Scream: It's implied that watching the vignettes on YouTube is making people's eyes bleed.
• Fan Disservice: As Kevin races outside to shoot the police chase, we catch a glimpse of his grandmother, who has to be at least in her 70s, stepping out of the shower.
• Fanservice: Averted. A short sequence of a woman stripping for an amateur porn director initially looks like it's going to be this, but it quickly turns to Fan Disservice when she pulls a gun and turns the tables on him.
  • Played straight in the beginning where Iris briefly flashes the camera, albeit the footage is heavily distorted.
• Groin Attack: Threatened by a woman to a skeezy porn producer who bought footage of her from her ex.
• Hope Spot Kevin catches up with the van holding Iris, but it's a trap, and Iris was Dead All Along.
• I Have Your Wife: At the climax, it's fairly obvious that Iris on the TV screen is under the control of someone or something else, and Kevin carries out "her" orders in order to stop her hurting herself. It turns out she was Dead All Along.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Only one child is involved in any of the movie (the one recording the gangbangers' party), and they are expressly spared the events they witnessed... unless they died when the gas tank ruptured and the backyard exploded.
• Ludicrous Gibs: The segment invokes this trope throughout, but most brutally when the van strikes a police officer so hard that he explodes, his twitching arm landing at Kevin's feet.
• Major Injury Underreaction: At one point, a dog belonging to one of the gangbangers gets impaled through the head by a skewer. It just sits there, seemingly still alive and unaware of the wound.
• Meaningful Name: Kevin's girlfriend, Iris, is seen almost exclusively through the lenses of various cameras.
• More than Mind Control: Implied to be happening with several people throughout the segment, most notably Iris, who walks out into the middle of the street before disappearing, and seemingly taunts Kevin from a TV in the ending.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Kevin says this before and after giving in to Iris's demands to upload the videos.
• New Media Are Evil: Implied. YouTube and Twitter are specifically name-dropped as helping spread evil videos.
• Police Are Useless: Despite the van literally traveling in a circle, the police seem to have no clue how to stop it. Possibly justified by the increasing death and chaos created by the van diverting their attention and resources.
• Psychic Nosebleed: A sign that someone is under the mental influence of the videos.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When police pursuing the van come near a backyard party, the attendees - heavily implied to be criminals - panic. In the following scuffle, a dog owned by one of the attendees is killed. Cut to said party guest standing over the dead bodies of his friends, all of whom have various kitchen implements sticking out of them.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Beethoven's 9th Symphony plays at the most inappropriate time possible.
• The Unreveal: When Kevin finally catches up to the ice cream van, the only sign of the driver is a pair of severed hands duct-taped to the steering wheel.
• Too Dumb to Live: One of the kids on the bridge climbs over the barrier to get a good shot of the van. He ends up slipping and falling.
• Wham Shot: The final shot of the film: the electrical systems of the city beginning to run amok as The Upload corrupts everything.

Dante the Great

• Action Girl: Scarlett. She quickly gets the hang of the Teleport Gun duel she finds herself in with John and doesn't back down, despite, or perhaps because of, having seen what he's capable of.
• Artifact of Doom: The cloak, which houses, or may be an extension of, a hungry Eldritch Abomination.
• Asshole Victim: Scarlett's boyfriend, Clay.
  • John himself. It's hard to feel bad over his death when you consider that at this point, he was sacrificing people to his cloak, both for personal gain and just plain willy-nilly.
• Chekhov's Gun: One of the magic props shown in Dante's studio is a bed of nails. It is later used to impale a SWAT team member.
• Chekhov's Skill: The rope trick John teaches Scarlett winds up being what she uses to defeat him.
• *Click* Hello: During the climax, John switches places with a SWAT team officer down to their CLOTHES, shooting the officer's partner in the back after the one he switched with is shot in his stead.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Clay, Scarlett's abusive boyfriend, ends up having multiple bones broken by John's telekinesis before he finally kills him. Several of the SWAT officers in the climax suffer similar fates.
• Domestic Abuse: Clay, who is seen smacking Scarlett across the face in security footage. Too bad for him, his girlfriend is in the employ of a burgeoning Serial Killer with actual magic.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: When he discovers what he needs to do to fuel his cloak's powers, John is initially hesitant, but he soon becomes intoxicated with the things the cloak lets him do.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: It's implied that John genuinely cares for Scarlett, up until she turns him in to the police.
• Even Evil Has Standards: John kills Scarlett's abusive boyfriend as punishment for said abuse, even commenting "What a dick."
• Faux Affably Evil: John. He has stage presence and charisma when things are going right, but the instant the smallest thing escapes his control, he starts losing his shit. He even makes a series of puns when using the cloak to fight off a SWAT team.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The title character. He starts out as an unemployed trailer park hick who constantly fumbles amateur magic tricks to the amusement of his friends. All that changes when he finds a long lost cloak owned by Harry Houdini, imbued with frightening supernatural power.
• Historical Domain Character: Harry Houdini is said to have originally owned the cloak that empowers John. He got wise and chucked it.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Scarlett uses the rope trick that John himself taught her to feed him to the cloak.
• Hope Spot: Scarlett kills John and burns the cloak, only for it to appear in her house, unharmed, where it promptly seizes her.
• Ironic Echo: Deliberately invoked by Scarlett at the climax of the segment.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: John again. Once he realizes what the cloak needs to fuel its powers, it doesn't take him long to start doing it as a routine chore.
• Karmic Death: Clay, Scarlett's abusive boyfriend, as well as John; Dante himself.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: For the near-entirety of the climactic battle between John, the SWAT team, and Scarlett, the film itself switches from the Found Footage format to a traditionally-filmed action scene, possibly as a means of preparing the viewers for just how badass the scene itself is.
• Meaningful Name: The protagonist is a redhead named Scarlett.
  • Averted with Dante himself, which is just his Stage Name. His real name is John McMullen.
• Oh, Crap!: Scarlett, when she is found by the cloak again.
• Person of Mass Destruction: John, whenever he's wearing the cloak.
• Sanity Slippage: John's mother seems to display this in her final interview, where she says her son sent her a letter and she will be expecting him to visit soon... even though he's since died.
• Supervillain: John nails the trope through-and-through: a down-on-his luck amateur magician finds a magic cloak that grants him the ability to perform genuine magic in exchange for regular meals of human flesh. Subverted in that he has no superhero arch rival. Instead, he is defeated by a mundane aspiring magician who happens to know one clever trick that John himself taught her.

Parallel Monsters

• Affably Evil: The universe Alfonso visits might be inhabited by Succubi and Incubi with monstrous genitalia, who revel in gruesome rituals and films of human sacrifice, but other than that, they're really nice people who are just doing what's normal for them.
• Driven to Madness: Whatever Parallel!Alfonso did to Marta, it apparently left both of them incurably insane.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The parallel Alfonso is apparently deeply disturbed by what happens during his off-screen encounter with Normal!Marta. That doesn't stop him from trying to kill Normal!Alfonso. Also played straight with Parallel!Marta, who kills her husband because she thinks he hit her, which is apparently punishable by death in the parallel world.
• Fan Disservice: Parallel!Marta and her very prominent Vagina Dentata.
• Game Face: When preparing to attack with their genitalia, the inhabitants of the parallel world radiate red light from their eyes and mouths.
• Groin Attack: Alfonso escapes from an attacking monster by skewering its demonic phallus with the screwdriver he carries.
  • It's inverted later on when Parallel!Alfonso is shown being devoured alive by his wife's Vagina Dentata.
• Humanoid Abomination: A recurring theme of the series, it reaches ludicrous extremes in this segment.
• Karmic Death: Inverted: Both versions of Alfonso end up hurting the other's version of Marta, but it's through mutual misunderstanding and fear rather than genuine malice. Both of them end up being killed by their respective wives for things that their parallel double did.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Whatever transpires between Parallel!Alfonso and Normal!Marta leaves both of them drenched in blood from head to toe. Neither of them seems significantly physically impaired.
• Religion of Evil: The alternate world apparently holds Satanism as its dominant religion, and is policed by massive blimps emblazoned with inverted crosses that broadcast ominous chanting. Meanwhile, the inhabitants watch and perform gruesome rituals in their homes as entertainment.
• Signature Style: Nacho Vigolondo once more indulges his fondness for the Glowing Eyes and Throat Light combination.
• Squick: The parallel world treats bloody dismemberment as foreplay. Parallel!Marta is even visibly turned on at the thought of her husband butchering one of her would-be lovers.
• Too Dumb to Live: Alphonso is confused and disturbed at seeing unusual things like a bloody sack of organs as the centerpiece of a nascent orgy, which all the locals think is normal, but doesn't even think about fleeing until he sees people put on demonic Game Face (let alone Marta being left alone with one of those monsters).
• Twin Switch: The segment's plot is this, with a dark twist.
• Vagina Dentata: Both female and male varieties are displayed in the parallel world.
• Wham Shot: It quickly becomes obvious to both Alfonso and the viewer that something is very off about his and Marta's Mirror Universe counterparts. When he looks up at the night sky and sees the satanic zeppelin, he realizes that he has stumbled into nothing less than Hell on Earth.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Taken to its nightmarish extent. In the Mirror Universe, Alfonso goes outside to see a satanic zeppelin with a huge, neon inverted cross broadcasting demonic chanting.

Bonestorm

• Action Survivor: Jason and Danny.
• An Arm and a Leg: Taylor gets his arm torn off.
• Asshole Victim: Taylor is hinted to be a sadist, pretending not to have caught the group's successful stunts on film and urging them to do more dangerous things in the hopes that they kill themselves so he can sell it as a snuff film. He gets his arm torn off, is set on fire, and is eaten by the creature the cultists were summoning.
• Badass Normal: Teenaged punk skaters Danny and Jason are incredibly tenacious, tough, and resourceful in a fight, able to hold their own in a skate park brawl against a pair of unfriendly skaters and eventually against a seemingly endless army of undead.
• Chekhov's Gun: The segment features a literal one. Early on, Jason reveals that he carries a handgun, presumably for showing off or intimidation. It appears again at the climax, allowing him to take down several of the cultists with ease.
  • There's also the fireworks the skaters buy during their trip, which they use to blow up the skeletons.
• Continuity Nod: The cultists are revealed to sacrifice themselves to release a demon who rewards them by reanimating them into the undead. It's a sequence of events so similar to what happened in Safe Haven, that it's difficult to imagine they aren't connected.
• Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": Shaun introduces himself by his real name, but Jason and Danny refer to him as "Gas Money Kid", likely because they aren't that familiar with him. Same goes for "Camera Guy", who later reveals that his name is Taylor.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The cultists and their chanting.
• Flipping the Bird: One of the skeletons does this just before exploding from a firework.
• Foreshadowing: In the wake of the skate park brawl, Danny scoffs at Jason, saying that in a life-or-death fight, Jason would leave him to die. At the end, the skeletal cultists overwhelm him as he tells Jason to save himself, prompting Jason to successfully rescue him and finish off the undead with illegal fireworks.
• Funny Background Event: The blood from Taylor's severed arm catches fire. Cut to Danny and Jason continuing to fight for their lives while Taylor runs past in the background, screaming, flailing, and on fire.
• Ironic Echo: Danny mockingly insists that his friend Jason would abandon him in a moment if things got dangerous. His friend comes through.
• Jerkass with a Heart of Gold: Jason and Danny fit this. Throughout the segment, they trespass on private property to get footage of their skateboarding stunts and constantly insult their cameraman Taylor (though to be fair, he is mostly recording them to see them fail or possibly die). On the other hand, they act more respectfully to the other skateboarders at the park, complimenting a younger skater's skills and apologizing to another pair of skaters after accidentally crashing into them, and they even share food and cigarettes with a homeless man. Finally, by the end of the segment, both of them back each other up in the fight against the cult.
• Karmic Death: Taylor the camera guy, who is easily the biggest Jerkass of the protagonists, gets his arm ripped off by a cultist before getting burned by the cultists' inflammable Alien Blood, then gets eaten by the creature they were summoning. Meanwhile, Jason and Danny, who have more redeeming qualities, manage to escape with their lives.
• Made of Plasticine: The cultists die from one or two good whacks with a skateboard deck. And then they avert this trope by rising from the dead repeatedly until they are nothing but skeletons.
• Major Injury Underreaction: At one point, Danny gets his face set on fire. After a splash of water, he's ready to keep fighting like nothing happened.
• Oh, Crap!: Jason and Danny when the demon roars from underground and all the cultists they've slain get back up.
• Pet the Dog: The skaters normally have zero regard for others, but when a homeless man approaches them, they are happy to share their snacks and smokes with him, much to the chagrin of Taylor, who wants to see them fight him.
• Police Are Useless: The Tijuana police are called to the flood channel during the skaters' battle via helicopter. Rather than help the kids out, they just take one look at the situation and promptly fly off.
• Religion of Evil: Whatever the cultists believe in, it probably counts.